The First Reward That Hit Like a Brick to the Face
Honestly, the joy was overshadowed by worry.
It was a secret base. Whoa, that's the ultimate manly romance.
The era that started when I covered myself with a blanket and declared, “This is my hideout!”—the kind of romance every guy dreams about once in his life.
…But the problem was the scale.
Quest completed! The moment the notification popped up, a total estimate slammed into my head like a “System” alert.
It was roughly thirty pyeong—about the size of a single-family apartment unit.
If I put something like that on the surface?
News would break within the hour, no question.
So I kept overthinking.
In the end, my choice landed on the underground floor of my own apartment building.
The old warehouse on the deepest level, untouched for over a decade since I’d lived there.
‘Nobody’s gonna notice here.’
That was how I decided, and I used the “Underground Base Construction Permit”.
If this was the kind of reward that showed up whenever I wanted, I was gonna be grinding quests nonstop.
“Uwooooo! This is the monitor room from the movies!? And it even has better computers than my broken main unit?”
The inside was dimly lit even in the darkness.
Along the walls, rows of monitors, cables, and various electronic equipment hummed with a low, steady breath.
The floor was black metal, and every time I stepped, the reflected light flickered.
In the center sat a round console and one chair.
And above it, a holographic interface rose in response to my gestures.
But joy lasted only a second.
When I looked closer, empty ports and unassembled equipment slots were everywhere.
Warnings flashing on the walls said “Installation Pending.”
“So that’s why it’s called “Underground Base Construction Permit I”….”
It wasn’t fully complete yet.
Still, it was more than enough to make me grin.
I turned my shoulders, sat in the chair, and laced my fingers together.
“Perfect! As master, commander, teacher, commander-in-chief, owner, trainer, and producer, time to boot the computer and start the daily quest!”
The monitor flashed, and the boot-up sound blared out.
Still, compared to the war-torn camp where electricity never worked, this was heaven.
Honestly… the facilities were better than anything I’d had in the house I lived in up until now.
With the secret base complete, today’s work was over.
Now came the real job.
That meant rice-eating.
Playing games to have fun and earn money.
Hero or not, in a world without a hero association, justice didn’t put food on the table.
My main body couldn’t starve to death.
Of course, I could have looted food with hypnosis mode, but that was something I did before I became a hero.
So I decided.
What I eat, I earn.
The secret base meant zero rent.
The real problem was that the jeonse system had vanished entirely, wiping out every last won of my deposit.
I had to make up for it.
Starting today, back to rice-eating.
***
After a month of surviving by switching between “Hero” when monsters appeared and “Rice-Eater” on normal days, I learned one important thing.
This game world filled with “Chaos Beasts” wasn’t the blood-soaked hell I’d imagined.
Contrary to what I thought, it wasn’t constantly flooded with screams and blood.
Of course, I had no idea about the situation worldwide.
But at least here in Korea—the place I was stuck in—I could figure out the monster spawn patterns within a five-minute run to Seoul.
The exact cycle wasn’t clear, but rough calculations showed resets every two to four days.
Between those, it usually started with Minor Calamity monsters and, if I was unlucky, jumped straight to a full Major Disaster that leveled the city.
“At least the cooldowns are something… if they’d just spawn randomly, I’d have starved before I could even play.”
Sitting in front of the computer all day grinding left my back and shoulders aching, and my soul felt even worse.
That was when a monster spawn felt like a welcome breather.
Most of all, I was the only hero in this world, so I had to live by its rules.
Like the old saying, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
Every spare moment, I scraped together data—monster stats, spawn patterns, government reports, survivor testimonies—analyzing everything I’d gathered while playing hero.
Eventually, I reached a conclusion.
Even though I’d deleted the hero association from the settings before I reincarnated, this world had become a hardcore survival game with no helpers.
Still, humanity hadn’t completely broken.
Evidence remained in the official classification system for monsters here.
The monster rank system.
Monsters were divided into five classes, from weakest to strongest.
First, the Erosion Class—the lowest rank.
They were the cannon fodder of the monster world.
If a bus flipped over on your commute, it was almost always one of these.
Technically the weakest, but it just meant they were the least crazy monsters—not that they were safe.
There were even records of a single one turning an entire park into a crater in seconds.
Even a platoon had to be deployed to take them down.
At least they were killable in combat, so that was something.
Next came the Calamity Class.
From here, not just one crater—a whole city was on the line.
That’s when the military started calling it “wide-area response.”
Tanks rolling out, fighter jets darkening the sky—still, the city turned to hell.
When a Calamity Class appeared, news anchors’ faces would harden instantly.
[Government considering abandonment of the city.]
That was the template.
Above that was the Disaster Class.
These were monsters that could erase an entire city with a snap of their fingers.
In plain terms, something that could delete Seoul itself.
That was the Disaster Class.
The Chaos Beast I’d first encountered belonged to this rank.
It had carved through dozens of apartments in seconds and charged at me with terrifying speed after I pulled its aggro.
That moment, I truly understood how fucked this world was.
Even higher was the Catastrophe Class.
I’d never seen one myself, and I doubted most people in Korea had either.
After all, there were no records of monsters appearing on the Korean peninsula.
But on other continents it happened.
One Catastrophe Class monster in Africa turned an entire desert into frozen wasteland in a single day.
Millions of people were left frozen solid, their bodies still standing in the sand years later.
Even now, decades later, it still snowed on that spot under the midday sun.
Snow falling on scorching sand.
That was the Catastrophe Class.
Monsters on the level of wiping out an entire country.
And finally, the Ruin Class.
This one didn’t exist.
No records of it appearing, no witnesses.
Just a theoretical worst-case scenario cooked up by the military and academics.
The result of calculations assuming every Catastrophe Class monster spawned at once: planet collapse, atmospheric poisoning, total ecosystem extinction—human survival probability sat at 0.004%.
That number was branded as the Ruin Class.
A world where the sun disappeared, the air stopped, and time itself froze.
Even the word “human” couldn’t describe it.
Some people said the Ruin Class wasn’t a monster at all—it was the end condition of the entire world.
…In short.
Monster ranks went Erosion → Calamity → Disaster → Catastrophe → Ruin.
The higher the rank that appeared, the faster the world would end.
“Still, I haven’t even run into a Catastrophe Class or Ruin Class yet….”
Every time those words left my mouth, I got a weird déjà-vu feeling.
By the game settings, they existed, so one day Korea would get that scenario too.
The real question was whether I’d even survive it.
Before hunting monsters, I had to think about my title.
Hero.
If this was a hunter story, it would’ve been simple—kill the bad guy, loot the stuff, and call it a day.
But here, a hero’s job was saving people, not just killing monsters.
That day when I rescued the brother and sister being attacked by the Chaos Beast, I finally understood.
In this world, the only human who could bring hope was me.
So if a Catastrophe Class or higher appeared, the first thought wasn’t “Can I win?” but “Can I save even one more citizen?”
While I was still mulling that over, the system window suddenly popped up.
“Reward-Generating Grind Mode” activated
“Right now?”
The blue interface that appeared completely took over my vision.
This was the personal mode my gallery seniors had jokingly added because the game felt too boring—now we could put in quests.
It wasn’t just killing monsters anymore; it was a real-time mission system that rewarded you based on the situation.
That’s exactly what had fired off now, just like when the Chaos Beast appeared.
For the past month, nothing had triggered even when Calamity Class monsters showed up, but this meant…
“No way another Disaster Class appeared like last time?!”
My heart dropped to ice-cold levels.
But.
“Even in this world, a place where talented people from the country gather!”
📍 Location:Seoul Autonomous Defense High School (SAHS)
🎁 Reward:Underground Base Construction Permit I
“A school?”
Wait, what did I just read?
School? Of all places, Seoul Autonomous Defense High School (SAHS)?
I stared blankly at the screen for a long time, completely speechless.
A monster quest at school?
This wasn’t a takedown mission—it was a nightmare hostage operation in hell.